Reform and Education

In his latest column David Brooks wields the rhetorical “reform” cudgel, bashing the people who disagree with him as supporting “superficial” reforms. Nowhere in his article do you learn what he is calling reform and what he is calling superficial.

Let me help. What he is calling reform is a form of privatizing education. Charter schools and probably vouchers that don’t actually give parents and children in crappy schools a real option to choose another school, but rather subsidize those parents wealthy enough to afford private schools (see Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol). While charter schools serve a wider range of students, they are more expensive and siphon funds away from the already failing larger schools.

Don’t believe that I like the current state of public schools. I am currently home-schooling my fifteen-year old because of the poor quality of the teachers at our local high school. I also taught in a private boarding school in the East that was far superior to most public schools.  (And don't think I'm too holy to not try to get my kid in a charter school.  His lottery number was too low.  I do guarantee you, though, that if he had gotten in I wouldn't be trying to motivate a hormonally charged pseudo-adult to read at home.)

But I said “most.” That’s because there are some brilliant public schools. What makes them great? They sit in wealthy neighborhoods. They get more money.

Real reform, rather than crypto-privatization, would mean funding all schools in a state equally. It is not equal opportunity to have one quality of schools for inner-city (read ghetto) students and another quality for suburban (read upper-class) students. Obama knows this. He worked in Chicago. He knows that New Trier High School in Winnetka, just north of Chicago, is a premier public school.

Brooks doesn’t tell you what he’s really talking about. It’s because he doesn’t want people to know.